I can see myself in what you're saying. All I knew is that I wanted an excellent stereo system in my new car because I can't live without music. And, I knew I wanted an mp3 player. That's all.

I saw the empeg and I thought it was great, but too expensive, and I had a lot of questions to ask before deciding if that was just a high price, or if that was a too high price So I sent an email to Empeg ltd., believing I would get a reply in weeks, with some pre-made standard text in it.

I got a reply in few hours, maybe just one, if I remember well. It was by a human being, not by an automatic response system. I got totally meaningful and sound answers to my questions. We mailed each other more for a while, and in two days (could have been few hours if I didn't have a life besides reading emails ) I was more than convinced that the empeg was exactly what I wanted, and that the price was GOOD! It was immediately clear that this small company was really amazing, made up by ppl "like you and me" who liked what they were doing and did it well. Really well.
No need to say that support I had since that time on has never - never - disappointed me. Whether that was a credit card problem or a knob that needed to be replaced. And all this happened way before I ever decided to enter this forum.

So, you can imagine how happy I was with empeg after I did enter here, and the empeg itself got enriched by such a great community and all that it implies, whether it is software of just ideas or help.

Now, by just talking to them, I got convinced. If I had read this forum, it would have been even easier to convince me. So, I agree with Tony, REAL marketing would have helped to sell empegs, definitely. You really need to UNDESRTAND what empeg is all about.

Good analysis there, t-fab.

So how did everyone here first hear about the empeg? My first encounter happened one day when I was pondering mp3 players, seeing them being sold everywhere and low and behold, I decided I wanted one for my car. So I started my search on the world wide web, but found nothing but cd-r players. That is, until I clicked on a lonely little link on the bottom of the list that read "empeg". The heavens sang that day, when the photons emitting from the monitor in the beautiful shape of the empeg had at last reached my retinas for the very first time. (this was probably a year or so ago)

I first heard about Hugo's mp3mobile project in the summer of 1998 whilst chatting in the #mpeg3 channel on EFnet, which I had been frequenting since discovering Winplay3 in late 1996. Some dude posted the link in the channel and we were all oohing and ahhing at the one-line text display of the titles and stuff (not to mention Hugo's chrome shift knob!) It was nothing like the Empeg, in that I think the computer was mounted in the trunk/boot and I think it was a Pentium rather than an ARM chip, but the ideas were there.

My first thought was "I should build something like that" but as the months progressed, I learned that he was going to release a commercial version of the product, so I figured I'd wait on that. Well, we all know how things have progressed since then.

I joined this BBS in mid-1999 when the Mk1 was just about to be released. I lacked the necessary funds to buy it, but I followed things closely as a lurker until the Mk2 came about. I always try to stay away from first-generation products in any category so the kinks can get worked out, and the Mk2 fulfilled all of my wishes, and then some.

Two years later, it's still cutting-edge.

Ah, memories.

"Yz33d, you are being charged with eight counts of improper cockiness and 1 count of unnecessary use of a poll. How do you plead?"

Not guilty.

"You have the right to a trial by jury."

Ahh...Winplay3...that takes me back. I had that running on my 486 (just barely). Back then I was still mostly into the MOD/S3M scene. Winamp didn't even exist yet. And you really had to search out MP3s.

Yeah MOD's and S3M's were my bread and butter in my BBSing high school days, circa 1991-1994. Me and my buddies strung together some cool techno/rap S3M's in our copious spare time.

WinPlay3 was an absolute dog, didn't support long filenames, and was uglier than sin, but it was the first piece of software that I took one look at and said "this kinda thing is gonna be huge if enough people find out about it." I wish I was smart enough back then to go register the MP3.com domain or something like that, but at the time, my main concerns were chasing women, consuming large quantities of beer, and trying to go to enough classes to maintain passing grades.

Well, I have to say, that is definitely reasonable doubt.

Out of interest, I wrote the first MOD player for the ARM processor, back in 1988

Hugo

Look on the bright side, the American judicial system requires unanimous voting for a conviction. So you're a free man!

Hugo, you've got enough people around here tooting your horn that you don't need to toot it yourself!

Incidentally, what are you doing on the BBS at midnight England time? It's almost like you're waiting for something big to happen............

Nah, just got back from a NSX meet in london and was doing a bit of catching up before bed

Wasn't trying to toot - my MOD player wasn't the best one that came out by a LONG shot, but it was the first

Hugo

Damn... So no beta tonight Oh well...

Yeah MOD trackers were fun.. I remember struggling to get the most out of those precious 4 tracks... Then when S3M's came out and there were like 16 tracks, it was miraculous... Then people would cheat and sample entire drum loops such that they were the exact length of a measure of the song... At that point you might as well have just sampled the whole song... Oh wait, that's what MP3's are..

Beta 8 was released to the Alpha team last night. If it works OK it should go public early next week.

Rob

So how many pints do I have to order you guys at Wrestlers to earn a spot on the alpha team?

A firkin each, and a packet of pork scratchings (to share).

Rob

Greetings!

Could you translate those measurements for the folks in the US? I am vaguely familiar with the term firkin, but pork scratchings sounds a bit ominous...

http://www.porkscratchingworld.com/

So what are the main differences in beta 8?

They've fixed the bugs

So what are the main differences in beta 8?

They finally got the World Peace and End to Famine patches completed.

They're temporarily disabled, though, due to licensing issues with the original vendor.

Osama finish beta 8 bug virus today. Waiting for empeg to log main PC on net.

Ok, this is pretty offensive.

Calvin

Not because I mind people trying to bash the empeg (even in such an infantile manner), but because the image and name used are in such poor taste, would you mind "moderating" that (obvious) post into oblivion and changing the password on the account? Don't just delete it because someone else could just recreate the name.

Bruno

but because the image and name used are in such poor taste, would you mind "moderating" that (obvious) post into oblivion and changing the password on the account?

Even if I could do that, I wouldn't. The person using the account is someone we all know. He is our friend, he is a good person, and he was simply being funny. He is a long-time empeg owner, and he is one of the biggest supporters of this community.

In terms of "taste", it's no different than when JC was posting, or when I posed as Rex Oah for a little fun. Personally, I found the posts hilarious, even before I checked out who the poster was.

I think that if you knew he was a BBS regular, you might have felt differently about the posts. It's like... if a stranger stops you on the street and tells you an off-color joke , you might find it offensive. But if your best friend tells you the same joke, you would laugh. It's merely a question of context.

I knew he was "one of us" right away. Even before I checked out the source, I could see, both from his carefully-prepared BBS profile, and from the comments in the posts, that this was a knowledgeable empeg owner and a longtime BBS regular. So maybe that's why I laughed and you got offended.

But as the saying goes, "Humor is like a frog. You can dissect it, but the thing dies in the process."

Naw, I just generally don't find BinLaden stuff funny. Especially when people mis-spell his name. It's USAMA. With a "U"

Now, the JC stuff was totally fine. I mean, you can still blame everything that goes wrong in the world on him or his dad (who might very well be one and the same), but you can't prove it.

Bruno

All I really saw this as was another 20 posts I had to read through to catch up with the BBS this evening... I guess one man's garbage is another man's gold.

tfabris: I think that if you knew he was a BBS regular, you might have felt differently about the posts.

I'm not so sure (sorry!). A nom de plume is an honored tradition that I personally cherish, I have probably annoyed in excess of 320 people with some of my posts, and, Bob knows, fully 80 percent of the jokes I've ever told went down faster than the Andrea Doria,.... but .... I would rate U/Osama as a miscalculation from a comedic perspective.

I have to agree with yn0t_ on this one.

I don't know.... He is funny, though somewhat repetitve... OTOH, the traffic volume we get here is insane without that kind of posts, and apparently some people find the pseudonym choice offensive even when it is used to mock the caveman. Then again, most of us will rise the entropy of the board here and there with a joke (and I find it good, of course).

So, I don't know...

Ah, good.

Someone else has started a post about the future of the Rio Car, saving me the trouble of doing so. So I read through the entire history of the thread just to see who had said what and whether my ideas have already been said. And it seems they haven't.

In reply to:

---

So how did everyone here first hear about the empeg?

---

Oh, looking at Hugo's mp3mobile project, and then all of a sudden it had this link to a new company called empeg that would make you a player if you registered your name in a queue. I was, from memory, somewhere around 293, and now own Mark 1 player 61. I've sort of given up reading the BBS; not being able to keep up with the volume of traffic, overall being quite happy with the features I've got, and having a brother who reads more regularly than I do :-) I also produce a DJ-style mix every once in a while.

I've been thinking about the whole business model of the empeg, and I believe there's a way it could have worked. I think it should have been obvious right from the start that the advertising (such that it was - internet searches) would never keep the sales volume high enough to justify continuous production. In this I agree with Tony, and say that part of Sonic|Blue's carelessness was to grossly underestimate how much advertising they needed to do to break into the market and get a reasonable turnover going.

The market is there - we're evidence of it. Pioneer and Sony producing high-end, 'high-quality' car head units that cost more and offer less is evidence of it. The many stories from Hugo, Rob and others at !empeg of customised installs and special requests is evidence that there are people willing to pay whatever necessary to get exactly what they want.

The other mistake, and I think this is a mistake that has a long history, is to assume that the empeg / Rio Car would be a consumer item. That's like saying a Volvo S40, or BMW M3, is a consumer item. Sure, they're not the ultimate (I was going to say 'Rolls Royce' :-)) of the car world, but the people that buy them are people that have decided that what they want is that car. On the other hand, they are not people who just throw money at the problem and make it go away; they want bang for buck, they've read the spec sheets, and they have decided. (For my part, I'd go a Nissan 200SX, but that's because they're faster and sportier and, perhaps, a bit rarer too).

Now, when a person orders an M3, they don't usually expect to just go down to the showroom and find one with exactly the features they want sitting there. This is the other difference between a specialist item and a consumer one; availability. And I think that it's possible to sell the empeg in this kind of model: tell the customer "put your name down on the list, and when we've got enough orders to make it commercially viable to do a run, you get your player." The easy thing about this is that the only thing that changes in the hardware is the hard drive size - a consumer component that is fitted specially anyway.

The advertising problem - getting continued market - is never going to go away in whatever business model you propose. And certainly the indications I see on the BBS say that there was simply too little interest generated in the right media to keep sales running. And I'd be willing to bet that any other problems people propose with this model are also shared, or worse, with the models already tried.

And it seems that my main question ("What's Sonic|Blue planning for a new car player?") will continue to remain unanswered for a while yet :-)

Have fun,

Paul

Thanks, Paul, for bringing this thread back on-topic.

I'm not sure that SonicBlue necessarily underestimated the amount of marketing needed. Maybe they knew exactly how much would be needed but were simply unable or unwilling to deliver it. I don't know how the company works internally, but I can envision a lot of scenarios in a large company where even the best-laid-plans go awry.